Robert T. Lazarus Professor in Population StudiesDirector, Institute for Population Research056 Townshend Hall614.688.3476This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Teaching/ResearchJohn Casterline is a social demographer who conducts research on childbearing (fertility). His current research focuses on fertility theory and methods, demographic transition in Sub-Saharan Africa, demography of the Arab region, demographic transition in low-income societies, and the causes and consequences of unintended childbearing.

During a three-decade research career, Casterline has investigated the causes and consequences of fertility decline in developing countries. The enormous decline – from six births to two births per woman on average – surely ranks among the most significant social changes of the past half century, transforming adult lives and childhood experience, and with major ramifications for the economic and social structure of societies.

Relying primarily on survey data (some of it national, some localized), Casterline directed multi-country multi-year projects on social diffusion models of fertility change, on unmet need for family planning, and on unwanted fertility (methods of estimation, consequences for parental and child well-being).

In the mid-1990s, he began collaborative research on demographic change in the Arab region that has continued to the present, and during the same period he has examined fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, the last remaining high-fertility region on the globe. In the course of pursuing these topics, with local collaborators Casterline has engaged in fieldwork in the Philippines, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt, and Ghana.

His current research agenda includes components of contemporary fertility decline (motives vs. means), fertility decline in sub-Saharan Africa, decline in unwanted fertility (a public health success story of the past three decades), family change in the Arab region, and the impact of demography on family and kinship processes (e.g. sibling relations).